Beyond Anthropocentrism: Ecological Sublime in Anglo-American Context

Abstract

By opposing the dualistic paradigm implicated in the Kantian sublime and eventually resulting in man’s mastering of the material world, this essay upholds Christopher Hitt’s notion of “ecological sublime” as a more respectful mode to relate with the natural environment. Hitt’s revision of the sublime is significant to overcome the false separation of nature and culture (the concept of “internaturality” is here offered in substitution), while fostering the abrogation of the anthropocentric stance that deeply marked the first phases of American history. Despite the multiple contradictions emerging from both their writing experiments, John Muir’s essays and Emily Dickinson’s poetry are here proposed to articulate a more biocentric view of the interlacings of the human and non human.